This article on priests who have left active ministry appeared in
the Boston Phoenix, July 18-25, 2002. The author, Kristin Lombardi, is
actually a largely unacknowledged hero in the exposure of the clergy sexual
abuse nightmare. Kristin researched and wrote a brilliant series that appears
in the Phoenix in 2001. This series first exposedthe cover-up of John Geoghan by Bernard Law. However
it was not until the Boston Globe obtained the previously secret
documents and began its investigative exposures in January 2002, that Lawís
duplicity became widely known.

This article on how the official Church treats resigned priests speaks
volumes and is as relevant and true today as it was in 2002.

Thomas Doyle 3-21-09

Bitter divorce

Boston Phoenix

July 18-25, 2002

While the Church has spent millions to hush up its pedophiles, married priests
canít even collect their pensions.

BY KRISTEN LOMBARDI

MARK
SUTTON KNEW the act was "wrong" in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church. But
after serving as a Franciscan monk and a clergyman for 24 years, in Albuquerque,
New Mexico, Sutton knew, too, that he could ease the pain and anguish of a
grieving family, whose one wish was to witness their daughterís baptism before
she died.

"Here was a young girl who had suffered a violent accident," Sutton recalls. It
was 1996, and Sutton had left the Catholic priesthood to marry his wife, Rachel,
five years earlier. That meant that he was forbidden to function as a priest in
any public manner whatsoever. But the "vocation," as clergymen describe their
call to the ministry, never left Sutton. And so, since his departure from the
institutional Church in 1991, he had gone underground, so to speak, quietly
performing pastoral and sacramental ministry without Church approval. On this
day, he was working as a patient escort at a Catholic-affiliated hospital in
Albuquerque. He had just delivered the school-aged girl, bloodied and barely
breathing, from the scene of a brutal motorbike accident. The girlís family,
recognizing that her death was imminent, asked Sutton if anyone at the hospital
could baptize her. He relayed the request to the hospital chaplain, who
requested his help. Surely, he reasoned, the circumstances at hand, an anguished
family crying out for spiritual aid, qualified as an emergency. And according to
canon law (No. 976), even a priest without faculties can minister to the
Catholic faithful in such dire times as "the danger of death."

So
Sutton performed the sacrament, receiving the familyís heartfelt gratitude.
Within minutes, however, word spread to the Catholic hospitalís director, who
blasted Sutton for praying for the girl and demanded his boss terminate him.
Says Sutton, "Here the family was overwhelmed with joy in the midst of all their
sorrow, but the director wanted me fired."

It
was not the only time Sutton had bumped up against the Church. When he announced
his plans to marry, in 1991, his bishop was unexpectedly gracious , offering
Sutton $1000, an old car, and a yearís worth of life insurance to ease the
transition. But others of his archdiocesan superiors were not so understanding,
and since then, Sutton has faced one affront after another. He has been denied
jobs as a chaplain in secular settings, such as hospitals; terminated for doing
"priestly things," which his accusers left vaguely defined; and ordered to leave
parishes in which he is a congregant after parishioners discovered his identity.
Church superiors have gone out of their way to make Suttonís life miserable,
using their political and social influence to prevent him from landing secular
jobs by interfering in the interview process or threatening people who were
willing to hire him, thus depriving him of a decent livelihood. Throughout the
1990s, Sutton says, he lived in utter fear of the Santa Fe, New Mexico,
archdiocesan bishops. All this because he left the priesthood to marry.

"My
wife could not believe that the Church could be so hard on one of its faithful
followers," says Sutton, now secretly operating as chaplain at an Albuquerque
nursing home. "She was just aghast that the Church could be so harsh on the
married priests."

Suttonís experience may be extreme, but itís not isolated. More than 100,000 men
around the world have left the Catholic priesthood since the 1960s. In the
United States alone, the number of Catholic priests has todaydropped to
44,874, a 23.5 percent decline since 1965, according to the Center for Applied
Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. Most of these former
clergymen, as many as 90 percent, according to one 1985 study, bade farewell to
the priesthood to get married.

Church officials, for the most part, have shunned these men. Married priests
have been kicked out of Catholic dioceses, virtually penniless, with nothing but
the clothes on their backs. Theyíve been denied aid to ease the transition into
the everyday world, no low-interest loans, no counseling, no job contacts. Some
bishops, such as several of Suttonís, do everything in their power to prevent
married priests from gaining employment. Others force former priests who opt for
laicization to move 500 miles away to ensure that no one is aware of their
previous status. Still others cancel retirement benefits.

Until recently, most married priests simply accepted the Churchís
vindictiveness. But now, with the clergy sexual-abuse scandal dominating the
headlines, exposing a staggering number of molestations and an appalling pattern
of cover-ups by the Church hierarchy, married priests are beginning to see their
mistreatment for what it is: a bitter irony. Notes one former Boston clergyman
who taught some of the Archdiocese of Bostonís accused predatory priests at St.
Johnís Seminary, in Brighton, and who left the priesthood to marry in 1968, "It
is ironic that, over the years, the men who fell in love with women were looked
upon as abject failures, while the men who abused children were protected."

IN
SOME WAYS, the Churchís posture toward priests who leave the "clerical state,"
as married priests call the priesthood, has improved over the years. In the late
1960s, when clergymen were fleeing their dioceses in droves, Church superiors
looked upon priests who wished to marry with disdain, as if they were traitors,
failures, and, in the words of one married priest, "pariahs." Says Father Thomas
Doyle, a clergy-abuse expert who has served as a Catholic priest for 32 years,
"If you left the priesthood up until the 1970s, you were as good as dead." These
men, he says, "had so much guilt heaped on them. They faced a terrible,
judgmental attitude."

Today, the stigma associated with leaving the clergy has dissipated. Priests who
resign arenít necessarily made to feel ashamed for falling in love and, in
essence, recognizing their humanity. Some Church superiors take the news of a
priestís departure in stride, as if resigned to the inevitable. Paul Roma, 66, a
married priest from Portland, Maine, remembers feeling "taken aback" by his
bishopís reaction to his decision to leave, in 1998. "He said, ďGo ahead and
go," Roma recalls. "He gave no arguments. Nothing." Other officials lend a
helping hand to their former priests, something that never happened in the
1960s.

This
is not to say that Church officials regard married priests as equals. Those who
seek an official departure from the priesthood must become "laicized," which
means that their religious vows are annulled. Laicization allows priests to
marry inside the Church, albeit in secret, with no guests or witnesses. But this
privilege comes with a steep price. Once laicized, a priest cannot wear his
priestly garb. He cannot identify himself as a former priest. He cannot teach
catechism, read the liturgy at Mass, or distribute the communion, all of which a
Catholic lay person can do. In short, a laicized priest gets wiped off the books
as if heíd never served the institutional Church at all.

Many
former priests find the process so degrading that they refuse to go through with
it. A priest who petitions for laicization must declare not only that he cannot
live up to his celibacy vows, but also that his ordination amounts to a big
mistake. According to the Churchís laicization petition, a copy of which was
obtained by the Phoenix, a laicized priest has to agree to move miles
away from "the area where his previous condition is known," so as "to avoid
scandal and astonishment on the part of the faithful."

"The
process is insulting," says Terry McDonough, 65, a married priest from Duxbury,
Massachusetts, who applied for laicization in 1984, only to withdraw his
petition months later. He was subsequently kicked out of the priesthood. He
adds, "I wasnít about to say my ordination was invalid. To me, that wasnít the
issue. The clerical culture and lifestyle was the mistake."

McDonough, now a rehabilitation specialist at a Bedford hospital, has yet to
shake the sense of shame that he endured upon leaving the priesthood in 1984.
Back then, he was a 48-year-old Air Force chaplain who had been in the active
ministry for 22 years, as a missionary in Indonesia, a seminary teacher in
Wisconsin, and the chaplain at Hanscom Air Force Base, in Bedford. He had lived
the priestly life long before his 1962 ordination. At 13, he left the
Charlestown projects where he was born and entered seminary. For years, he
embraced what he now bitterly calls "this priestly stuff" until he befriended a
woman named Susan in the early 1980s. Their friendship would force him to
contemplate his celibacy for the first time.

"It
dawned on me that I wasnít participating in life," McDonough says. "I had no
experience of adult relationships, of families and children.... As a priest, you
feel lonely in the midst of a crowd." And so, in February 1984, McDonough sent a
request to the Air Force chaplaincy asking for a transfer from the priesthood
into military-officer service. "Thatís when all hell broke loose."

When
McDonough announced his plans to marry Susan, now his wife of 18 years, his
fellow chaplains encouraged him to shack up with her secretly instead. When he
balked, his request for a transfer was denied. Bernard Cardinal Law, the
archbishop of Boston, wrote letters to the Air Force, Army, Navy, and Coast
Guard chiefs saying that if they accepted McDonough as an officer, the Church
would never again endorse another Catholic chaplain for the armed services. The
Air Force chaplaincy then booted McDonough off the base in the dead of winter,
with nothing to his name. It even stripped him of his military-issued coat.
McDonough eventually sued the Air Force for reinstatementí and won. The Board
for Correction of Military Records found the Air Force had acted improperly in
discharging him because of "undue influence by the Roman Catholic Church." But
at the time, says McDonough, "I had lost my identity, my job, my future,Ē
everything except Susan."

That
the Catholic Church, the worldís largest spiritual institution, could behave in
such a vindictive manner might have shocked us a year ago. But if the unfolding
clergy sexual-abuse scandal has shown anything, itís that the Church hierarchy
often acts in the most un-Christlike ways. The treatment dealt to former
clergymen like McDonough seems tragically harsh. After all, priests who leave
the active ministry do not simply get up and go. Typically, it takes years
before they can admit their feelings; then, they have to muster the strength to
act.

Paul
Roma, for example, wrestled with emotions of denial, guilt, and angst for nine
years before he left the priesthood in 1998. Since childhood, Roma had his heart
set on becoming a priest. But as a teen, he felt bound by another duty, the
military. He entered the Navy in 1953. He later married, had five children, and
lived an everyday officerís life, until his wife died of breast cancer in 1983.
Her death prompted Roma to reconsider his boyhood dream. By then, he had become
a deacon at a San Bernardino, California, parish. "I really felt drawn into
being a full-fledged priest," he recalls. At age 48, in 1984, he entered
seminary.

Four
years later, he was ordained in the Manchester, New Hampshire, diocese, where he
worked for a decade. He met his current wife, Germaine, at his first assignment
in a Pelham, New Hampshire, parish. When he noticed a "spark" of attraction
between them, he panicked. He had just devoted years to training for the clergy.
His identity had become tied up in the Church. "I didnít want to fall in love,"
he says. "I knew what people would say if I left." He knew that the Church would
ostracize himí and that he would lose his $700 monthly stipend, lodging, car,
and medical insurance. He figured the best thing to do would be to "get away
from such a tempting situation." So, in 1990, he went into the Navy again, this
time, as a base chaplain.

Finally, after years of writing letters to Germaine, his heart won out. "It was
like I was walking on top of a picket fence," he says. "Marriage was on one side
and the priesthood on the other. I couldnít walk the line anymore." When he left
the clergy, Roma knew he was viewed as a scandal in the Churchís eyes. But if he
didnít leave, he says, he might have become "an even bigger scandal" by breaking
his celibacy vows.

To
this day, men who left the priesthood to marry, such as Roma and McDonough,
continue to feel let down by the Church hierarchy. After decades of devoted
service, many are denied their hard-earned pensions. Most Catholic dioceses,
including the Boston archdiocese, refuse to offer any type of retirement benefit
to priests who resign to marry, classifying them as priests "not in good
standing." And at least in the case of the Boston archdiocese, benefits are
denied even though priests pay into the system while wearing the collar.
According to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (UCCB), the average priestly
retirement benefit differs from diocese to diocese, ranging anywhere from $500
to $1100 per month. Yet according to a 1999 survey conducted by the National
Federation of Priest Councils, a nationwide association of diocesan and
religious-order priests, only 28 dioceses out of 158 respondents include
resigned priests in their pension plans. "I call that elder abuse," says William
Manseau, 66, a former Lowell priest whose 1969 marriage to a former Boston nun
named Mary made banner headlines in Boston. "The Church is stealing from me and
any other resigned priest when it denies us our just compensation."

Manseau is among hundreds of former priests now pushing the pension issue. The
movement began in 1994, when former priest Paul McGreevy, a San Diego attorney
who had resignedfrom the Boston archdiocese, tried to obtain benefits
for a disabled, resigned priest who, despite 29 years of service, found himself
practically destitute. McGreevy sent as many as 4000 letters to archdiocesan
officials and organized 60 married priests who believe they have a right to
collect their benefits. Yet it took three yearsí work and a scathing March 1,
1997, column by Eileen McNamara in the Boston Globe to force Cardinal Law
to acknowledge the priestsí request. The effort, now headed by Manseau, has
grown beyond the Hub to include some 130 dioceses nationwide.

Butthe cardinalís response to the initiative seemed half-hearted. In a March
17, 1997, letter addressed to Manseau, Law wrote that the archdiocese has "no
civil or canonical obligation to provide benefits" to married priests. That
argument, of course, also favors the archdioceseís self-interest: according to a
February 14, 1997, Church memorandum on the issue, which was obtained by the
Phoenix, 117 inactive Boston priests were eligible for some type of pension,
at a cost to the archdiocese of between "$750,000 and $1 million" at the time.

Other Church-affiliated organizations actually contradict the cardinalís
contention. In 1999, in fact, the Canon Law Society of America (CLSA), a
Washington, DC based professional group of canon lawyers, published a report
titled "Retirement Benefits of Retired Church Personnel in the United States of
America," in which it explored what it called the "canonical obligations of
justice for retired Church workers," including priests who leave the clergy.
According to the report, canon law dictates that "a priest who has dedicated
himself to an ecclesiastical ministry has a right to a pension." Resigned
priests who work in secular jobs, the report states, "should be entitled to a
pension payment upon retirement, however small that amount [may] be."

While the Church appears to have a canonical obligation to pay pensions to
married priests, it isnít necessarily mandated by federal law. According to the
UCCB, few Catholic dioceses have a pension plan thatís registered with the
federal government, and thus subject to labor-law regulation. "Many dioceses
donít have a true pension plan," explains Sister Mary Anne Walsh, a UCCB
spokesperson. "What they have is a charitable fund for the care of retired
priests" in need of support. Some dioceses, such as the Diocese of Sioux City,
in Iowa, do have a pension plan. But for those without plans, Walsh says, "there
would be no legal obligation" to pay retirement benefits to resigned priests.

Although Cardinal Law has refused to pay pensions to married priests, he has
maintained the position articulated in his 1997 letter that "the Archdiocese and
I would not want any priest to find himself in his later years living in
penury." To this end, the archdiocese has set aside a token sum to bestow on
former priests who can prove that theyíre needy. In other words, it hands out
cheap donations. One of the 60 retired priests pushing the issue, who paid about
$150 annually into an archdiocesan account for 22 yearsbefore leaving to
marry in the 1970s wryly notes, "This is about justice. But to Bernie Law,
married priests have become pure charity. Isnít that sweet?"

BY
CONTRAST, Cardinal Law has long extended an indulgenthand to sexually
abusive priests in his archdiocese. Itís true that problem priests who are
defrocked see their privileges revoked just like any other laicized priest. When
Law defrocked the now-infamous convicted child molester John Geoghan, the former
priest lost his pension, his housing, and his high-end Boston attorney, Tim
OíNeill, whose legal bills the archdiocese hadformerlycovered.
For decades, however, bishops across the nation took care of clergymen who had
preyed on children, rather than report such offenders to police. The Church has
routinely funded an abusive priestís therapy, salary, and legal defense, all
while keeping him in the active ministry. Sometimes, officials coddled priests
whom they knew to be serial predators.

Take, for example, retired clergymanPaul Shanley, who ranks among the
Boston archdioceseís most notorious pedophile priests. Last week, Shanley was
indicted on charges of raping four boys during his assignment to a Newton parish
in the 1970s and 1980s. This past spring, the court-ordered release of 1700
pages of archdiocesan documents shed light on the extraordinary lengths to which
Shanleyís superiors had gone to accommodate him. In 1989, Shanley stepped down
as pastor of the now-defunct St. Jean the Evangelist parish. At the time, Church
officials had credible evidence that he had not only assaulted male minors, but
had also promoted sex between men and boys. Regardless, his superiors approved
his transfer, in 1990, to a San Bernardino, California, parish, with a top-level
written assurance that he remained "a priest in good standing." The archdiocese
covered the cost of Shanleyís airfare and paid him a stipend of as much as $1690
per month. During the three years Shanley functioned as a part-time priest
there, living a secret life operating a raucous gay motel in Palm Springs, the
archdiocese sent emissaries to meet with him in California and increased his
monthly stipend by another $300. This, as it negotiated settlements with several
of his rape victims back home. In 1996, when Shanley finally retired as a
"senior priest," Cardinal Law made sure to pen a friendly and avuncular-sounding
letter praising his 30 years in the priesthood: "This is an impressive record
and all of us are truly grateful for your priestly care and ministry." Today, as
Shanley sits in a Middlesex County jail cell awaiting trial for child rape, he
continues to collect a pension of more than $1000 per month.

Other dioceses have also showered perks upon their abusive priests. Some have
offered exorbitant deals to induce these priests to disappear, and thus shield
Church officials from any liability. One Dallas, Texas, clergyman named Robert
Peebles, who admitted to molesting seven boys throughout the 1980s, re-invented
himself with the help of his superiors. In 1987, after forcing him to resign,
diocesan officials sent Peebles off to Louisiana. They paid $22,000 to enroll
him at Tulane Law School, where he studied to be a lawyer. They gave him another
$19,600 over the course of two years for living expenses, set him up in a
furnished apartment, and essentially hid him until the press discovered him in
New Orleans in 1994.

Even
when convicted and hauled off to prison, predator priests continue to receive
assistance. In Massachusetts, John Hanlon is serving three life sentences for
molesting children during his stint as a Hingham pastor in the mid 1990s. To
this day, though, heís listed in the Catholic Directory as a "senior priest" who
qualifies for retirement benefits. A 1997 Mother Jones article on the
issue of priestly celibacy quoted an acknowledgment by Hanlon, written from his
Norfolk prison cell, that he has "not been forgotten or neglected" by the Boston
archdiocese. Indeed, last February, the Boston Herald reported that Law
himself has gone to visit Hanlon in jail at least twice since 1998.

Church officials chalk up such special treatment to canon law. Priests who abuse
children and adolescents yet remain in the active ministry must be supported,
according to the canon laws on charity. Explains A.W. Richard Sipe, a
clergy-abuse expert and former Benedictine monk who left to marry in 1970, "The
canons [regarding] charity bind a man to the social system and require the
institution to support those priests who have not left" no matter what abusive
acts they commit while in the priesthood.

Ultimately, Church officialsí actions speak volumes about what the Catholic
Church views as the worse crime, the larger sin committed by its priests.
Assaulting children, and thus breaking vows of celibacy, can be forgiven by the
Church, as has been demonstrated time and again in the cases of pedophile
priests like Shanley and Geoghan. Abandoning the clerical state, however, would
seem to be a transgression of much greater magnitude. "In the Churchís
estimation," Sipe says, "the real crime is leaving the priesthood. Itís the
worst thing that a priest can do."

OF
COURSE, married priests know better. They know that their experiences as
husbands and fathers have only made their lives richer, emotionally and
spiritually. They know that marriage has added a dimension to their ministries,
which many of them continue today. Sutton, McDonough, and Roma are all members
of a national group called Celibacy Is the Issue (CITI) Ministries, based in
Framingham. They perform home Masses and sacraments, including weddings,
funerals, and baptisms (and they are listed, along with 5000 or so married and
resigned priests, on the CITI Ministries Web site at
www.rentapriest.com). The organization
has given them a way to exercise what they consider their God-given right to
preach. They point to canon law No. 290, which says: "After it has been validly
received, sacred ordination never becomes invalid." And this, they explain,
means, "once a priest, always a priest." In any event, none of the 10 married
priests interviewed by the Phoenix for this article voiced regrets about
leaving the Catholic clergy. Perhaps Jim Magmer, 80, a married priest from
Portland, Oregon, sums up the sentiment best: "Had I been a priest allowed to
marry and have a family, Iíd have been a happy man. Now, Iím just happily
married."

But
ever since the clergy sexual-abuse scandal blew wide open earlier this year,
married priests have found themselves suffering from a kind of
post-traumatic-stress stupor. They, like many among the Catholic faithful, feel
disbelief, bitterness, and rage toward the Church hierarchy and its blatant
cover-up of child molestation by priests. But for them, the scandal has also
opened old wounds. Why, they wonder, did officials exhibit such solicitude
toward priests who were working against everything for which the Church
supposedly stands? Why were clergymen who assaulted minors given second (and
third and fourth) chances while others, in the words of one married priest, "had
the spiritual boom lowered on them?" Where was the compassion for priests who
had committed themselves to the clerical state and who had left with their
integrity intact?

"I
feel betrayed," says Roma, when asked about the current Church crisis. "I never
had sexual relations with my wife until I left the priesthood, yet they look at
me like Iím a piece of shit?" He continues, "After all these years, you
find out that a priest can molest a child and the Church will protect him. It
has you scratching your head."

Sutton, too, feels outraged by the apparent double standard. "If you stepped on
a tack," he asks rhetorically, "how would that make you feel?" He then adds, "I
am devastated by the double standard because I feel I committed a good service
for the Church."

Yet
Sutton and his fellow married priests have managed to find a silver lining to
the scandal: the calls among the Catholic laity for broad reform. They are
encouraged, they say, by such efforts among the laity as the Voice of the
Faithful, the Wellesley-based organization that will hold a July 20 reform
conference in Boston. Finally, it seems, the faithful have begun to recognize
that their power in the Church comes through their control of the purse strings.
Sooner or later, the current decline in contributions among parishioners should
help move the hierarchy along.

But
in the end, when the dust finally settles, Sutton and many of his colleagues
donít hold out hope that the Church hierarchy will embrace radical change. Even
basic issues of justice, such as pensions for resigned and married priests, seem
remote to them. After all, the institutional Church represents an ancient beast,
one thatís accustomed to caring for its own, not for those who renounce the
priesthood for a human thing like love. As Sutton himself puts it, "In the
standards of the hierarchy, the married priest does not exist. They would prefer
for me to disintegrate into thin air or fall off the face of the earth. Thatís
the way the institution works."